A Liberal Dose, Oct. 7, 2021 "What Is So Bad about Columbus?"

 

A Liberal Dose

October 7, 2021

Troy D. Smith

“What’s So Bad about Columbus?”

 

Last week I wrote that it is the duty of historians to explain things honestly, not to be cheerleaders. This week, days before Columbus Day, I am going to put that in practice. Most of you are aware, I’m sure, of the controversy surrounding this holiday in 21^st century America. Some of you might understand and agree with the premise that Columbus introduced a lot of bad things to the Americas, including the beginnings of Native American genocide and the taking of their land. Many of you, on the other hand, while acknowledging the surface truth of those things, believe they are outweighed by his heroism and the impact of his actions; many of you may think that the criticisms are blown out of proportion and are one more example of “cancel culture” and an effort to revise, or rewrite, history to make Europeans out as the villains in every scenario. You may believe that it is unfair, and ahistorical, to judge someone in the past by today’s standards.

But you probably don’t really know Columbus.

I’m going to start off by acknowledging that, even though Columbus was not the first European in the New World, and even though he refused to believe he had been anywhere but India, his achievement was huge. It opened the way for colonization of the New World and its resources, quickly led to the first truly global trade network, and started the modern era.

My judgment against Columbus comes not from the fact he opened up the possibility for those who came after him to commit terrible acts. It comes from the terrible acts he himself committed. And I do not judge him by the standards of the 21^st century; I judge him by the standards of other people in his own time.

When Columbus arrived on the island he called Hispaniola (and which the natives called Ayiti, or Haiti), he was greeted by the very friendly and peaceful Taino tribe. In his own journal (which is where all the things I recount come from), after noting how peaceful they were, he remarked how easy they would therefore be to enslave. And that’s exactly what he started doing. He also noted how beautiful the Taino children were, and that there were a large number of them in the age range of 9 or 10 -the age, he pointed out, that some gentlemen in Spain like their women, because they can be trained easier. In fact, he noted the trade of young Taino girls as sex slaves among his own sailors.

He ordered the Taino to produce a certain amount of gold for him every three months or, in lieu of gold, 25 pounds of spun cotton. If any Native did not have the required goods, they were to have their hands and feet cut off. And many suffered that fate. When the Taino tried to run away or rebel, Columbus ordered attack dogs set on them to tear them to pieces. The alternative was to stay and be worked to death. Within a generation, almost all the Taino were dead. So, Columbus literally initiated genocide, slavery, and underage sex trafficking.

Queen Isabella was furious at his treatment of the Native people. He was eventually arrested for mismanagement of the colony, his brutality one of the reasons, and sent briefly to a prison in Spain. He was let out after a short time, but he never received his promised payment for his voyage.

A young soldier who had served under Columbus, Bartolomé de las Casas, was so traumatized by the things he had witnessed that he became a priest and spent the rest of his life fighting -with some success- for the rights of Native Americans. Every European of the time was not like Columbus, so that excuse is invalid.

I like to think of the upcoming holiday as Taino Remembrance Day.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE